


Victory?

by madam_ypsilon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madam_ypsilon/pseuds/madam_ypsilon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the day after the attack in Godric's Hollow where Voldemort failed to kill Harry. Minerva has too many unanswered questions and a whole day of waiting ahead of her to think them over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victory?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vivien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivien/gifts).



It is over. It is finally over and there's happiness everywhere. People are dancing in the middle of the streets of Hogsmeade. The Hog's Head and the Three Broomsticks are suddenly crowded with wizards and witches, ordering every single drink one could think off. There are splashing fountains of Butterbeer and people have charmed their glasses of Firewhiskey to shoot sparks. No-one dares to drink from any of it, but it looks nice. It looks wonderful.

From the window of one room above the Three Broomsticks, one owl flies to a house nearby. With a loud hoot it lands on the window sill. With the simple language that says a lot more than outsiders could know, the owl conveys the news to his friends in the nearest tree. Voldemort is gone. Yes, people died, a house was destroyed, but no-one thinks of that now. Voldemort is gone. Dead? Disappeared into nothingness? Fled? No-one cares. Not yet.

Diagon Alley is crowded with people. A few journalists of the Daily Prophet enter the pub, insisting on merely taking a small break. They are assigned to cover everything that is happening this evening. But what can you do when something as fantastic as the word victory can finally be said out loud? 

There's the minister for magic on the wireless, giving his own boring speech about searching out the followers, the minions, the ones who helped the dark lord. There has to be justice. There is a job still to be done. It's obvious to the few Aurors that it's their job to search those people and hand them over to the ministry. But not now, not yet. Some of them are worrying about it still, but trying not to show it to the others, who aren't even thinking of when to return to the office and receive new orders. 

"Give them a reason not to celebrate," says one of the journalists.

"How about the one boy who lived?" says another and the headline for their front page article is born.

Other owls are forgetting their duties. There's one sitting on a car outside a rather boring-looking semi-detached house. There's another standing on a roof top and then flying around. He isn't sleepy at all. His plan is simple. Show the whole world, and not just the wizarding one, that the worst evil that ever happened since Grindelwald has finally been defeated. He hoots as loudly as possible until a sharp hiss makes him almost topple over. "Shoo!" says a voice, and a cat hurries out of the lantern light. "What's the racket about anyway," says another voice. "Shooting stars everywhere, and all those owls and now this wild cat?" 

"At least he still thinks I'm a cat," Minerva sighs to herself. "What's the racket about indeed? A scandal! After everything that happened..." Throwing confetti in the air and spelling out the word victory with your wand...

Had any of her friends passed by the house, they would still not be sure if it was her curled up under the hedge. She had left the castle only minutes after Albus had gone. In her cat form it was easy enough to hide in all the crowds, easy to avoid all the questions. Everyone who heard the news was likely expecting answers from Dumbledore, and if they couldn't find him they would notice her instead and expect her to know just as much. So it would be for any of the Hogwarts staff. But Minerva hadn't felt like answering questions. She'd had too many unanswered ones herself.

She had all but offered to Dumbledore to find Sirius Black, or even Remus Lupin to take care of Harry. Who else could know how to help him through this odd, parentless life than James's best friends? But no, the plan was already underway.

"Dumbledore said Privet Drive," Hagrid had told her. "Tiny village called Little Whinging. It's where 'is uncle an' aunt live. Imagine that, goin' from Godric's Hollow into a house full of Muggles. Well it's the only family he's got left says Dumbledore." 

And what a family it is. Now that she's seen the owners of the house going about their daily routine it's an utter mystery to Minerva how Harry can be hidden out here. And hidden away he has to be, that's the one thing she's understood. Something in Dumbledore's actions so far makes her wonder if all the news is true at all. All the Fillibusters going off in Hogsmeade and the splashing fountains of butter beer don't match with the cold feeling she has in her stomach. If Harry is leaving one of the happiest homes to move into this place, he will have eleven years ahead of him where no-one is going to tell him anything about the reason he is alive at all. This woman, who is supposed to be Lily's sister, looks like she never gave a wit about Wizardry or anything to do with it. She married the purest Muggle she could find just to be away from there and Minerva is sure she'll be glad to keep Harry out of it as well. That son of theirs will make no friends with him either, just as dumb and dull as his parents. How can a person, if it can be called a person, destroy someone else's future in one night? Minerva thinks it might be easier for her to fathom if she hadn't known this villain since she was at school herself.

There was a time, decades ago, when Voldemort wasn't Voldemort yet. there was only Tom Riddle, who grew up in a Muggle orphanage and was picked up from there and taken to Hogwarts by Dumbledore himself. And with all the nonsense from Slytherin house about purebloods and status, there he was in his green robes staring at her from one side of the stands while she landed in the Quidditch pitch.

"Who says you belong in that house at all? I haven't found any witches or wizards in the books with the name of Riddle?" 

He'd merely smiled at her. "The sorting hat is always right," he'd said, and then he'd walked off.

Why had she even tried to trace his background. There were too many unbelievable stories about him floating around the castle. His parents both died, and he hadn't learned any magic from anyone before he came here. How could someone who seemed that meaningless make it to the upper ranks of the house? She'd seen enough characters after him climbing the same ladder, with similar ambitions, with that same strange hunger for admirers, for leadership, for power, but no-one so far had been as fanatic about it as Riddle. 

Minerva thinks of the fifteen-year-old boy she'd known at school, never up in the air on a broomstick, always with his nose in books, constantly writing notes. Come to think of it, the few times they spoke to each other for longer than half a minute were in the library. There was such a wide gap of difference between the prefect who tried to look up things about transformations and shapeshifters and the haunting red-eyed maniac who tried to defeat death.

All his friends at school already called him Lord Voldemort. Back then she'd snorted, she'd thought it was as overdone and excentric as Dumbledore's long beard and his obsession with odd magical gadgets. This atmosphere between the NEWT students in the Slytherin house, the evenings when you could see them all troop off to professor Slughorn's office, it made you think of the nineteenth century. They weren't merely speculating about Grindelwald, about the founders or about their latest potions projects. There always seemd to be secret tests of will, unwritten rules. There was always something between the lines. All those friends later became his recruits, his Death Eaters.

Minerva had constantly wondered what had made Slughorn favour this boy when he was so eager to recruit wizards and witches from wealthy families or with a wellknown background. There was no-one in the history books called Riddle. There was someone else called Marvolo but back then she had hoped furiously that man had nothing to do with the boy she saw in the great hall every day.

And after the war ,after all his travels, when he'd dropped too many chances to do something useful with his talents, to form the kind of character that meant something in that long aftermath, he went for power instead. He clung to all the things that were true for him and only believed the things that fit in that puzzle. So it was spreading death and despair in hopes of overcoming it himself and sacrificing everything for it. How could a mutilated monster like this be defeated by a tiny boy who didn't even have a wand, let alone any inkling of what magic meant in this life. 

Defeated, yes, because something in Dumbledore's actions made it seem as though he wasn't dead. Lily and James however, after three times of fanning him off, what was it Hagrid had said? "Can't believe that happened. If it's true what they say in the hog's head that is." "You'd be wiser to wait over here for news than to trust a story you hear in a bar," she had snapped. But since Godric's Hollow wasn't that big, and someone could have easily disapparated to tell someone else about the wreckage he'd just seen...And if Voldemort had vanished into thin air, what was the point of hiding Harry in here?

To any passer-by Minerva still looks like a cat who has just dosed off in a small patch of sunlight on an otherwise very autumn-like day. But she lets her thoughts wonder on, counting down the hours and trying hard not to be noticed by anyone in the street. Dear Arabella Figg and all her lessons in cat behaviour, if she ever finds out why Minerva had needed those she'd wish for the umpteenth time that she could use a wand to hex her friend into the next decade. 

Cars are coming into the street now, and turning into the driveways. Children are zigzagging inbetween them, throwing their bicycles against the wall of their houses. Minerva blinks, there isn't a clock nearby and of course she doesn't have a watch. But it's obviously around dinner time and there's that car again, parking in the driveway of number four on exactly the same spot where it stood this morning. "Shoo!" says a voice, and this time she's better prepared and merely looks up. No-one is going to chase her out of here, not even Dumbledore if he finally arrives tonight.

She wants to see for herself, that Harry is still here, still alive.

She wants to know the whole story, to have the puzzle solved for good.


End file.
